The creative team tells us why they swapped Bond for Magnum P.I.
What good are spies if they're not allowed to spy anymore?
This is the question driving the seventh season of Archer, FX's animated spy comedy that flirts with disaster, pithy banter, and absurdist twists on a weekly basis.
While most of the series' previous seasons followed high-risk, inevitably catastrophic spy missions, the seventh season (which returns on March 31) picks up with Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) and his cohorts banned from spy work after bungling a partnership with the CIA. And that mistake only happened after messing up countless times while running their own agency for an assortment of shadowy benefactors, not to mention a brief and reckless detour into light drug dealing, in a Miami Vice–inspired set of adventures.
It's a long story.
But in the four episodes screened for critics, Archer's seventh season is one of its most ambitious yet — and not because of any particularly intense missions. Instead, the show has moved its cast to Los Angeles and transformed the former spies into private investigators, in a Magnum P.I.–inspired set of adventures.
To exactly no one's surprise, they're not so good at letting go of all the high-tech gadgets and international conspiracies that defined their former lives.
Here's what you can expect from Archer's seventh season, with bonus insights from creator Adam Reed and executive producer Matt Thompson.
Archer's move to Los Angeles makes everyone reevaluate their place
FX
Cyril, Ray, Pam, Archer, Cheryl, and Lana: new clothes, new variations on their old shitty attitudes.
Besides that outlier fifth season, Archer's been based out of a New York that's neither of our time nor of any other. They wore '60s-era suits and dresses; the main enemies were the KGB; and the characters had cellphones and the internet, but their computers were Working Girl–era basic.
The seventh season, however, catapults the cast across the country to Los Angeles, where their spy skills are put to the test to satisfy the demands of Hollywood's elite.
The CIA has blacklisted the team. They've got no resources. When they get beat up, they stay beat up. Cyril (Chris Parnell) — Archer's resident frustrated and often emasculated accountant — has become the de facto boss, since he's the only one with a law degree and ergo the only one who can legally own a private investigation firm.
Said Thompson in delight, "Oh, he's going to lord this thing over everyone. Like his giant penis." (As the show has previously established, Cyril does at least have that to brag about.)
Meanwhile, Archer's perpetually disdainful mother, Malory (the indomitable Jessica Walter), can't rely on a firm of spies and infinite resources to break her out of tough spots anymore, and so has to swallow her pride and help herself.
As we are quickly reminded in an impressive sequence, Malory used to be quite the spy before she settled into swilling gin behind a desk. "[I have] a drawer full of scripts where the B- or A-story is flashbacks to Malory blowing up bridges in World War II or whatever," Reed told me. "Definitely a long and checkered career."
So, hey, if season eight turns out to be the Malory Archer show, you won't hear me complaining.
More importantly: Shifting Archer's focus from international spy games to local PI work opens up a whole new world of possibilities
For Reed, moving to Los Angeles and away from international spy work also made it easier to write a comedy without bumping up against real-life disasters — like how he decided to ditch the name of Archer's spy agency for those first four seasons, which just so happened to be "ISIS."
"As a writer, [a shift provided] a little bit of escapism from the spy stuff and geopolitical ramifications," Reed told me. "When we started writing Archer, things were a bit more calm in the world. ... As things have started to go to shit, there are fewer and fewer things I feel like joking around about."
And so throwing Archer, his off-again, on-again partner Lana (Aisha Tyler), and the rest of the characters into private investigating felt like a way to keep them active and in the field without bringing down entire countries, as they've done in the past.
There are still plenty of weirdo twists and guest appearances to keep Archer fans satisfied. For instance, season seven welcomes a new slate of talent. Patton Oswalt will recur as a millionaire whose temper tantrums tend toward the deadly, while Keegan-Michael Key and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons show up in the first episode as a pair of mismatched cops.
FX
J.K. Simmons and Keegan Michael Key, Archer-ized.
According to Thompson, the two — who also recorded their parts together, where most Archer actors record their voice tracks separately — will be popping up throughout the season to investigate an ongoing murder case.
Thus, much of Archer's traditionally absurdist ethos is still around in season seven. Archer and Lana still bicker on the job by trading escalating pop culture references, and Archer's nemesis Barry returns in all his cyborg glory to wreak unholy havoc, as he is wont to do.
But even indulging in some tried-and-true Archer traditions doesn't take away from the fact that season seven feels like a real evolution for its characters — because they're being forced to evolve.
Everyone on Archer has had nine lives and then some. In season seven, they come crashing down to earth — and they hate it.
In the beginning, Archer was a parody of James Bond, that relentlessly smooth secret agent who rolls out of bed in a crisp button-down with a half-naked lady on one arm and a stiff drink in the other.
But as the show has gone on, it's revealed more than a few chinks in Archer's armor and made him — much to his own horror — much more of a human being. He and Lana even have a kid now, which would have been unthinkable back in the first season, when they were spitting venom at each other and/or shooting each other in the foot to cut off an insult.
Season seven is by far the most personal of the Archer seasons — or at least the one that most knocks its usually outsize characters back down to earth.
As everyone grapples with their new positions, Archer even starts to come to terms with what it means to kill people — something we've seen him do dozens upon dozens of times in previous seasons.
The third episode of this new season ("Deadly Prep") is maybe the best example of how much Archer is actually dealing with issues that previously would have been played off as jokes.
From the description — "A prep school reunion leads to an interesting business opportunity for Archer" — it would be easy to assume the episode would feature some classic Archer debauchery and raunch. Instead, the show made Archer struggle to face his childhood bully, who had put him through some real traumatic shit that's apparently haunted him all his life, secret agent or no.
"The germ there was, what would you do if your nuclear-level bully from childhood gave you the power of life or death?" Reed explained. "To me, that was an interesting experiment. How would I react to that? How would normal people react to that? And then how would Archer react to that?"
And even though Reed himself was surprised at how dark the prep school story became as he wrote it, there's a reason Archer allowing himself some real human reactions came naturally to the story.
"What separates us from other cartoons is that we do change," Thompson told me. "Relationships change. People come and go. People die. Our clothes change, and our settings change. ... As the show's gotten older, we've expanded our universe."
Plus, Archer has simply never looked better
The ongoing story goes a long way toward expanding Archer's universe — but so does the overall look of the show, which has dramatically improved since day one.
When I recapped the sixth season of Archer over at the A.V. Club, I took note of an episode that buried Archer, Lana, and Ray underneath a devastating avalanche. The animation was, quite simply, leagues beyond where the series had been to that point.
"One of our animators made a side-by-side reel of season one of Archer and similar things in season six," said Reed, "and it looks like two totally different television shows."
Archer's increasingly ambitious animation has carried over in a way that makes just about every scene pop off the screen in season seven. As per Thompson, the show has used the move to LA as a reason to move away from its usual late-1960s aesthetic into the early '70s, which you can see even in the more free-flowing clothes on the cast. In the premiere, a stunning set of shots light up the literal glass house Oswalt's character lives in, with the Los Angeles skyline glowing in the distance.
FX
Ray, Lana, and Archer on a job.
And while Thompson pointed to this season's ability to better animate "hand-to-hand" fights — including a tricky slo-mo sequence coming later this season — even a seemingly simple set piece requires a new level of attention.
In one season seven episode, the office calls Archer as he's on one of his murderous "rampages," but they think it's just another one of his prank voicemail gags, where his recording tries to pretend like he picked up the phone in order to fake out a caller. (Bonus voicemail gag trivia: While we've heard Archer's voicemail go on and on, we've rarely heard the full version Benjamin actually recorded. According to Reed, Benjamin has even done a full 15 minutes of voicemail gag material without stopping.)
As the horrific sounds of Archer's fistfight ring out through the phone speaker, his co-workers sit and wait it out, s-l-o-w-l-y spinning around idly in their chairs — a motion that's deceptively difficult to do on a cartoon.
"That's one of those jokes that ends up being wildly expensive to animate," Reed said. "Probably as much as a car chase, [since] you have to draw basically 360 [degrees] of those people."
But even more than just rounding out its jokes, Archer's eye for detail and willingness to change is what sets it apart from most cartoons.
"It's the worst business decision Adam and I have ever made in our lives to say, 'Hey, let's keep changing the looks of these cartoon characters!'" Thompson said with a laugh. "The No. 1 problem we have in animating this show is continuity. We pay so much attention to it. Because our show changes ... that's really at the heart of us never wanting to be stagnant, never wanting to say, 'This is what works. Let's just keep doing this.'"
And more than anything, season seven is defined by that pushback against falling into patterns. Everyone might seem the same as when we last saw them — but they won't be for long.
Archer airs Thursdays on FX at 10 pm Eastern.Previous seasons are availableon Hulu and Netflix.
You'd probably think
that no one handles quite as many sex toys as porn stars, but 40-year-old Chantall from the Netherlands has had more than 600 dildos, butt plugs, and vibrators pass through
her hands.
On the blog she started about four years ago, she reviews
every kind of toy imaginable—including several Tarzan vibrators, a smiling
butt plug, and a double penetrator. Her blog gets around 2,000 visitors a
day, while she also gets a lot of emails from people asking her for sex
advice on a weekly basis. Besides sex toy reviews, her blog also offers more in-depth
stuff—like a comprehensive guide to lube or tips for cleaning a sex toy.
To get to this level
of expertise, Chantall has been puffing and panting for almost 15 years—she's
been in the sex toy industry for much longer than her website's been live. I wanted to know more about this fountain of knowledge, so I went to
her home to get a good look at her sex toy paradise. When I rang her doorbell
around 11:30 AM, a cheerful redhead wearing a bright turquoise polka dot dress
opened the door. After a cup of tea, she led me to a small office upstairs full of brightly colored dreamcatchers, which she also makes herself and sells
online.
I spoke with Chantall
about her blog, toxic toys, and the ultimate orgasm.
VICE: Why did you start a blog about sex toys? Chantall: I have a degree in media studies, and after I graduated, I started
working as a freelance writer for various magazines. I've always been very
interested in sexuality, so when the editor-in-chief of the Dutch pornographic
magazine
FOXY asked me to write for them,
I immediately said yes. I was responsible for the product page and wrote about ten new sex toys every month. That was about fifteen years ago. From there my interest in sex toys just kept growing, so about four years
ago my husband said, "Why don't you start something of your own?" That's when I
started my own blog.
How many sex toys have you tried in those fifteen years?
I think I must be
getting close to one thousand. But some of them are so bad, you don't even want to try them out. I will
still turn them on, but I just don't put them in. So the toys that I have
actually tested—I think that's about six hundred.
I'm not going to torture myself by staying in bed with a terrible product for an hour in the hope that something will happen. If I don't get an orgasm within ten minutes, that's it.
Do the manufacturers send you all these
toys?
Yes, I have never
actually bought one myself. I've got connections with all the major brands,
like Lelo, Fun Factory, and Rocks-Off. They send me their newest products before
they even hit the stores, so I can try them out and write about it. I also work
with a few sex shops. They often let me choose the toys I'd like to test
myself.
Do you do this every day? I don't test a new toy
every day, because reviewing sex toys is just like having "regular" sex—sometimes you're in the mood, and sometimes you're not. But I do try to update
my website and answer messages from readers every day.
How long does it take you to test a toy? It depends. If the toy
is really excellent, I'll test it more than once. But
if it's terrible—which happens more often than the other way around—I
will be done with it very quickly. I'm not going to torture myself by staying in bed with a terrible product for an hour in the hope that something will
happen eventually. If I don't get an orgasm within ten minutes, that's it.
How do you go about testing a toy, exactly? I usually test the
toys on my own, but some of them are made to be used with a partner, so
sometimes I'll call in my husband. I do what I call a "dry test" first. I look
at the package, I look up what the manufacturer says about the product
online, I feel the material, read the instructions, I check the buttons, and I
take a look at and feel how the toy vibrates. I've
broken a toy right away just by turning it a bit. And if a toy stinks, I don't
even try it out.
If it stinks? Yes. The shape and the
motor of a toy may be amazing, but if it's made out of unsafe materials, I
refuse to test it. Unsafe materials generally have a very typical plastic smell.
Safe materials are glass, metal, and one hundred percent silicone, for instance. Those
materials are non-porous, which means they are easy to clean and that bacteria,
fungi, or other kinds of dirty stuff don't get the chance to stick to your toy.
For instance, an unsafe material that is sometimes used for sex toys is jelly, which is PVC that's been softened with plasticizers. These
plasticizers are not good for your health. There have been studies on rats, and they got infertile after a small exposure
to plasticizers. So toys made out of jelly are not allowed to ever enter my
body.
But toys made out of silicone are OK, right? Sure, though another problem
that comes into play is that a company is allowed to say that
the toy is made out of hundred percent silicone on the package, even if that's not the
case. There aren't many laws and rules concerning sex toys, unfortunately.
Is there a way to tell if a toy is unsafe, besides the material? There are a few tells: Never
buy a toy with a horny-looking woman on the package, never buy toys that smell,
never buy toys that come with a "For novelty use only" tag on the package, and above all, read about the product first or consult a sex shop assistant before you buy it. We are all so busy worrying about what we eat these days, but no one really thinks about how healthy their vibrator is.
What's your favorite sex toy? It's the Europe Magic Wand, purely because of the brilliant vibrations it gives you—though it just might the most ugly vibrator that exists. It
looks a bit like a microphone with a huge ball on it, and if you are a woman who has never
tried a sex toy, I'd advise you to not start with this one. It
vibrates very deeply, because it works on two hundred twenty volts. So, you have to plug it in
a socket.
What's the worst? I think more than a
half of the sex toys I've tested belong in that category. So every toy that's made out of unsafe materials is bad. And then you also have those that vibrate badly. I always compare
vibrations to the growl of a bear and the squeak of a mouse. Growling bear vibrations are the good ones, while squeaky mouse vibrations are
the bad ones. They are not only annoying to your ears, but also to your
clitoris.
Then you also have the
category I call "Funfair in your cunt"; toys in every color of the
rainbow, with clockwise and counterclockwise rotating pearls and glitter. It
all looks very pretty but I can not recommend those products for several reasons. And then there are the "sex toys that look like children's toys"—those are the ones I really hate.
What's the most extreme toy you've tested? The Sybian is a kind of fuck machine—it was so terrible! When I put it on, my whole house—including the houses next
door—started to vibrate. It's a device that weighs about twenty pounds, and the company
advised to put it on my bed, so that the mattress would absorb the
vibrations and my neighbors didn't have to enjoy my little adventure. For me,
that was too much hassle. I'm in for good and nice sex. I don't need it to be so complicated that I have to rebuild my entire living room.
A terrible 'Hello Kitty' vibrator, which according to Chantall is "a real collector's item"
Is there actually the right toy for every woman? Yes, I think so. But if you don't feel the need to have one, that's another story. If you have a good sex life with your partner or with your fingers, you shouldn't feel the pressure to buy one. But there are plenty of women who find it more difficult to have an orgasm.
Every woman is different, and I cannot guarantee that whatever I find pleasurable, all other women do, too. But I can tell you what toys you shouldn't use. I have so many toys at home—I don't think there is anyone else in the Netherlands who has tested that many.
That’s the single indelible detail you hold on to from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, first published in the US 20 years ago this month. Between rereads, you might forget why the armored bears are fighting or what makes Lyra Silvertongue run from world to world, but you always remember the fantasy of the daemon. It's a kind of externalized idea of the soul that manifests itself as an animal companion — like a pet who’s sentient, psychic, and intelligent and also part of you.
And a daemon’s species reveals something fundamental about its person’s personality. Children, with their fluid identities, have shapeshifting daemons, but at puberty a daemon settles down into a single form: a scholarly raven, a tough Arctic hare, a glamorous and malevolent golden monkey.
The fantasy of the daemon is a fantasy of self-knowledge, of completely understanding your secret, innermost self and your soul — and that makes it perfect for the philosophical, theological His Dark Materials, which is often described as Paradise Lost for teenagers. It’s a trilogy that takes the subtext of Paradise Lost, with its tragically compelling Satan and its coldly authoritarian God, and makes it text. The books are built around a war against an oppressive god, known as the Authority, and his Church; against a force that has "tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can’t control them, it cuts them out."
"Every advance in human life," Pullman writes, "every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."
In the universe of His Dark Materials, the Church and the Authority stand for conformity, for the suppression of self-knowledge and sexuality. In contrast, the fallen angels are the side of goodness and right in the moral universe of this trilogy, and they stand for the arts and sciences, for secular humanism, and for the pleasures of the body.
His Dark Materials, in fact, insists on the pleasures of the body. It imagines a kind of tripartite human nature, one that consists of a body, a ghost or spirit, and a daemon or soul — "but the best part is the body," the books conclude. "Angels wish they had bodies."
The body is what makes Pullman’s wicked authoritarian angels envy and hate humans so; fear of the body and of sexuality is what makes the Church castrate children and cut away their daemons. And in the end, our heroine Lyra is able to save all of the worlds by reenacting Eve’s fall and learning the pleasures of the body — by, in other words, kissing a boy. It is only after Lyra and Will kiss that they become "the true image of what human beings always could be, once they had come into their inheritance."
The morality of His Dark Materials is an inversion of the traditional morality of the Christian fall, one that privileges knowledge and experience and the body above innocence and ignorance and the soul. It posits that true self-knowledge and true spirituality can only be experienced through the body.
When His Dark Materials first came out, in 1996, this idea was explosive. The Catholic Herald called it "truly the stuff of nightmares." The New York Times said the trilogy "may well hold the most subversive message in children's literature in years." At the 2007 premiere of The Golden Compass, a film adaptation of the first novel in the trilogy, the Catholic League passed out pamphlets urging Americans to boycott a franchise that "denigrates faith."
But in the 20 years since the first volume of the trilogy was published, Pullman’s theology of the body has become more widespread. Take, for instance, Carol Ann Duffy’s new adaptation of Everyman.
Everyman is a medieval morality play, written in England in the late 15th century. In the original play, Everyman (guess who he represents!) is told by God that he will soon die and be judged. Everyman asks various figures to accompany him to judgment — his friends and family, his worldly goods — but one by one, they all refuse. In the end, Everyman is only able to achieve absolution and be cleansed of his sins by repenting before God and flagellating himself. This is traditional medieval Christian morality at work: It is only by scourging his body that Everyman is able to achieve a soul clean enough to be welcomed into heaven.
But in Duffy’s adaptation, first performed at London’s National Theatre in 2015, salvation by self-flagellation proves to be a false track. Instead, Everyman is only able to accept his death and find spiritual transcendence by repeating the prayer, "For the gifts of my body I give thanks / At the hour of my death." Everyman’s ecstatic gratitude for his body climaxes in a moment reminiscent of the climax of His Dark Materials: "Praise to my tongue for snowflakes, tequila, / marzipan, mint, cheese and honey, every kiss. / Every kiss." (Marzipan, coincidentally, features prominently in Will and Lyra’s kiss.)
Like His Dark Materials, Duffy’s Everyman cannot find the sense in a theology that punishes the body. Instead, theology must be experienced through the body, and it is only through celebrating our bodies that we can experience true spiritual transcendence.
This is not an idea that would have made sense when the original Everyman was written in the 15th century, or when Milton wrote Paradise Lost in the 17th century. At that point in history, bodies were uncomfortable and disgusting; they were filthy and riddled with disease. To get closer to God, you had to transcend the body itself. You had to punish and reject it. Relatively speaking, we've only recently figured out how to comfortably live in a body, with medicine and indoor plumbing and upholstered furniture. So it's really only now that this idea of a theology of the body is finding widespread acceptance in beloved YA fantasy trilogies and in celebrated plays by Britain’s poet laureate.
And it is only with a theology of the body that the fantasy of the daemon can be born. The fantasy of the daemon is that you can hold your soul in your arms, that you can cuddle it and love it and know it with your body, the way His Dark Materials'Lyra cuddles and loves her daemon Pantalaimon. With a daemon, you can even touch your lover’s soul, as Will and Lyra touch each other’s daemons.
These thoughtful, philosophical underpinnings of His Dark Materials are whatgive it such legs, and have kept it alive for 20 years and counting. They are why the BBC is planning a new TV adaptation even after The Golden Compass flopped at the box office. The trilogy presents the world in ways that can be shocking when you're a child and are still compelling when you’re an adult: It grows with you in the way the best books always do.
Plus, you know, daemons and armored bears are cool.
Jessie and Jennifer Clavin started working on new music while the former was getting evicted and the latter was abandoning an unhealthy relationship. With bassist Micayla Grace, the reeling sisters decamped to a tiny house in Joshua Tree to write. Conditions were ripe for regret, nostalgia and melancholy, yet the three women — who perform as the punk-pop band Bleached — emerged with a collection of songs that are resoundingly, stalwartly positive.
Maybe the self-reliance and survival instinct inherent to Welcome the Worms is a byproduct of its geographical beginnings. Joshua Tree does not offer help to climbers attempting to scale the Little San Bernadinos, warmth to campers when the desert temperature plummets at night, or dry…
…land to any soul in the way when flash floods rip through the desert valleys in less time than it takes to dismantle an easy-pack tent. What it does offer, after every long night, is the reward of an incomparable, five-alarm West Coast sunrise as it blooms over Eagle Mountain.
And so it is with the excellent Welcome the Worms, which makes good on the promise of Bleached’s debut, 2013’s Ride Your Heart — and fills the vacuum left by the dissolution of the Clavins’ previous band, the beloved L.A. garage-rock group Mika Miko. There is not a moment of self-pity here and, more remarkably, not a moment of judgment. Bleached isn’t ashamed to be young and searching. It may only be a single line in the perfect “Wednesday Night Melody,” but this record’s mantra really could be, “It’s good to feel just a little alive.”
That sentiment is rare for a genre that so often points out ills — whether one’s own or those of society. When Jennifer Clavin sings, “I can’t keep wasting my emotions on you” (“Wasted On You”), it’s not an indictment of the ex she fell too hard for, or of herself; it’s a straightforward message to a reflection, presented over gravelly guitars and a pop melody that renders the song distinctly hopeful. And when, in “I’m All Over The Place,” she sings the titular line, it’s neither an apology nor a red flag. It’s just how it is.
Welcome the Worms is upbeat, but it’s not happy-go-lucky. There’s crunch and steeliness to these songs, particularly when it comes to Jennifer Clavin’s vocals. In fact, the line with which the album closes is darkly reflective: “Memories, you got your hold on me / So tell me what do I do with these pictures of you?” Yet listening to Welcome The Worms straight through provides a particular type of endorphin rush: the kind that comes from the realization that, no matter how terrible things may seem at any given moment, they will bloom on the other side — and that you are the one who will make it so.
This year, The CW has seen its critical acclaim continue on a strong upward rise, with fan favorite series such as The Flash, iZombie, and Jane the Virgin all making good on their strong debut seasons with consistently strong second years. Joining this already impressive slate is the sing-song friendly Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which is so much more than that title would suggest.
I want to have it out with the people in charge of naming shows that greatly disservice the quality behind them. It’s what delayed me from starting iZombie, what took audiences away from Trophy Wife and Cougar Town, and to my utmost lasting frustration, is what killed Selfie way, way before its time. After being picked up for a second season despite low ratings, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has dodged that bullet, at least for the time being. While I’m sure its leading lady winning a Golden Globe for her performance doesn’t hurt their chances, I would like to think that the people behind the scenes recognize the gem they have on their hands.
There is so much that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has done remarkably well throughout the entire season from a strictly storytelling perspective, showcasing an unabashed focus on progressive points of view and plot lines. Rebecca’s main love interest is Filipino (not the norm on television) and the dialogue calls out internalized sexism and the double standards women have to live with compared to men, particularly in terms of their appearance.
One of the newest and most buzz-worthy developments has been Daryl, Rebecca’s boss, coming out as bisexual as he starts a sweet courtship with White Josh. What’s particularly great about it is that—rather than use it as power play (as has been the case in shows such as Mr. Robot and House of Cards most recently) or succumb to the erasure of the B in LGBTQIA as so many people seem to do—the show has embraced the new characterization while also making sure that the audience doesn’t get the wrong idea of who the character is and has reasserted what it means to be bi in an empowering and definitive way.
All of this makes for some phenomenal storytelling that has been simply a pleasure to watch with the stylish showtune gusto the series has, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend wouldn’t be nearly as biting or curious if it weren’t for its leading lady, Rebecca, played with a deceptive mix of cotton candy sweetness and realistic cynicism by Rachel Bloom.
In the past year or so, we’ve seen a surge of dramatic storytelling through comedy measures. We saw it with shows such as You’re the Worst, Please Like Me and Bojack Horseman and now we’ve seen the addition of Rebecca in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The series begins with her having a nervous breakdown in New York, where she’s on the fast track to success with a side of cardiac arrest when she sees an old flame, the aforementioned Josh. This leads to her recalling simpler times and when she last felt truly happy. Inspired by his appearance (as well as some strong feelings that spring to the surface due to it), she packs up her life and moves to West Covina, California, hoping to find the happiness and inner peace that she couldn’t find in the suffocating hustle and bustle of the city.
Rebecca, by her very nature, isn’t always a likable character. She’s ill informed on how the real world works, practices some light stalking to gain Josh’s affections, and can lie to herself along with everyone around her, typically to her own detriment. What separates her from the rest of the crowd of troubled TV leads is two aspects:
She feels real, but most importantly, her insecurity and crippling self-doubt is tangible.
Much has been written about how her depression has played out (beautifully), and I undoubtedly believe it’s something to celebrate—anything at all to lessen the taboo of mental illness, thanks. What the show does so remarkably well is ground her issues in a shocking realism, as the world around her is so heightened—all vibrant colors, sunny atmosphere, and the show is even ushered in by an opening with animated singers.
Juxtapose that with Rebecca as she gets ready for a date, as she lies dejected on her couch, or much more poignantly, sits on the floor of her home, shattered glass at her feet as her fantasy counterpart sings a song so full of toxic self-loathing it’s hard to watch.
Now, I can’t say that I have ever sneaked into someone’s home to delete a text (although I can add my name to a list of people who have definitely sent a text to someone who decidedly shouldn’t have gotten it). However, boy is it easy to understand that feeling of uselessness after self-sabotaging. The dawning realization that you only have yourself to blame for something going terribly wrong in your own life is a startling one, and how it can be a gateway to more, incessant self-doubt is not a melodious walk in the park. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend nails this empty feeling, and it does so with an appropriately bleak and crude fantasy showtune number.
Self-delusion has been an omnipresent theme of the series throughout its entirety, but it never makes it less painful to watch play out. Rebecca isn’t a perfect character, but she’s a relatable one who stands out in a slightly heightened universe as someone that the audience can latch onto. Her sadness and insecurities are recognizable, and while it’s important to celebrate female heroes and antiheroes alike (and trust me, I do both), it’s as equally exciting to watch and support a female character who has attributes I can identify with.
Rebecca sucking in and then frowning in the mirror while the uncomfortable Spanx don’t prove to be an instant fix? Rebecca starting a fad diet which jump starts a fad new outlook on life? All of this based on one insomnia filled night? The realization of how tough it is to make new friends in your mid ’20s?
I could go on. When the characters aren’t breaking into song and dance, they are living real lives, with real concerns and consequences, and it’s a welcome change of pace. There’s only one episode left of the series, and it’s been an excellent and eccentric ride of a first season. It’s a show so confident in its tone that it’s easy to declare it as “one of a kind.” Rebecca is lovable in her own, troubled way and is the perfect, messy representation of how superb this show is.
(image via The CW)
Allyson Johnson is a twenty something writer and a lover of film and all things pop-culture. She’s a film and television enthusiast and critic over at TheYoungFolks.com who spends too much of her free time on Netflix. Her idols are Jo March, Illana Glazer, and Amy Poehler. Check her out at her twitter @AllysonAJ or at The Young Folks.
So what if your mother always regarded you as more of an incompetent coworker than a daughter? Lots of women are just as prickly as you are, and they’re out there just waiting for you to come out and say, “Greetings.” Your inability to have warm friendships with other women who are unable to have warm friendships shouldn’t hold you back from trying to have warm friendships with other women who are unable to have warm friendships with other women! Here’s how to make semi-meaningful connections with your dour, tight-lipped compatriots:
Avoid eye contact.
A true friend won’t pressure you into the unbearable activity of looking at another person’s eyes. While many so-called experts maintain that eye contact is a critical facilitator of human bonding, very little scientific research has been done on women named Anne with one cat and no smile. Show her you care about her comfort level by staring at the wall or ground during your dispassionate conversations. She’ll thank you! Or at least, she’ll mean to, but then she’ll feel weird about it and not say anything.
Offer to share your strange dairy snack with her.
Whether it’s kefir, noosa, or chunks of feta, all emotionally unavailable gals love atypical yogurt and cheese alternatives! The next time you pull out a tub of cashew cheez (because you place a high value on getting your protein from non-animal sources at least twice a week), give her a spoon. Just make sure she knows to sanitize it before giving it back to you.
Invite her to partake in your hobby.
You enjoy reading, knitting, CrossFit, walking your dog, making your own sourdough, tinkering with your 3-D printer, and distance running. These are mostly solitary activities, but can certainly accommodate two people who haven’t given or received a hug in over a year. Invite her to join you in your productivity nook for little tandem hobby time. Don’t stress her out by chatting or learning more about her—that sourdough won’t knead itself! Everybody politely wins!
Share lots of anecdotes about your overemotional friends.
If there’s anything that gives an introvert a rush, it’s stories about an emotional wreck of a person who can’t get their shit together. Your desired friend-target may or may not know this charity case personally, but she’ll love hearing your anecdotes regardless. It’s fun to revel in someone else’s ridiculous life-storm caused by their excessive feelings, since neither of you feel comfortable expressing them in any real way. Tell her about that stunt Rachel pulled at Shawn’s wedding, or the time Michelle told her whole office she had endometriosis, or that girl Dahlia who got together with her ex 14 times over one month. Then you both can let out a hearty, “Hmm”!
Never attempt a hug.
Just—don’t. No, no, no. Don’t. Handshakes are fine.
There you have it: the definitive guide to making friends with intimacy-averse women just like you. Good luck out there!
We all love to spoon and be spooned. But sometimes you eat a Ben and Jerry’s Karamel Sutra Core pint for dinner and are filled with gas at the same time that your lover is cupping you with his toned body! You desperately need to break wind, but he’s holding you too firmly to run to your designated fart corner. But is he ready? If you’re not sure if he can handle you farting into his spoon, test him with these tricks:
See if he minds when you go to the bathroom.
This is a great way to see if he cares about you having bodily functions and submitting to the need to release them. If he laughs and says things like, “Okay, weirdo!” as you’re leaving to use the toilet, he might not be ready. But if he says “yep” or even just a silent shrug, those are his ways of furiously assenting to you having and needing to expel things from the bottom of your body! He might just be ready for you to fart into his trusting lap.
Try moving your thighs on his leather sofa.
We all know that if you move any part of your skin on a leather sofa, you make a noise like a fart. See if he reacts to your thigh noises by gently sliding from side to side on his “man cave” Pottery Barn sofa. If he says, “Are you serious right now?!” with a terrified and shocked look on his face, he might not be ready. But if he is supportively reactionless, that’s a pretty good sign he’s ready to be your direct fart target!
Test the waters by making fart noises with your mouth.
As you lie together trying to drift off to sleep, make a loud “THBTHTBTBHBBBB” noise with your mouth. If he says, “What was that?!” and slams the light switch, he’s probably not so accepting of your romantic flatulence. But if he smiles and pulls you closer, congrats! He seems prepared for you to pass gas into his cup area.
Warm your butt up a lot as you enter the spoon.
Not sure if your man can withstand the furnace of your lactose intolerance gas? Place one hand on each cheek and vigorously rub your butt until your cheeks are good and warm. Then enter his spoon! If he’s not turned off by your burning-hot butt, he might just be ready for you to give a good fiery butt-breath into his yoo-hoo.
If you’re already spooned in, and getting up to go to your fart corner might ruin the perfect mood, try taking this potentially deal-breaking step and let ‘er rip right onto his cozy spoon. Here is true intimacy—two people connected by a sigh! Or he just broke up with you and fled. Either way, girlfriend, at least you know he’s not “the One” for you to fart on forever!
Este artículo se
publicó originalmente en
VICE Francia.
Cuando comenté a varios amigos que estaba trabajando en un
artículo sobre cómo la libido del hombre disminuye a partir de los treinta,
todos ellos sin excepción me aseguraron que no habían experimentado ese
problema. No tenían ni idea de lo les estaba diciendo. A medida que
profundizábamos en el tema, vimos que el asunto era más complicado de lo que
parece.
En un principio, había pensado investigar sobre el tema
hablando con mis amigos heterosexuales, porque había notado un cambio en su
forma de hablar y practicar del sexo, así como en la frecuencia con que lo
hacían. Descubrí que, a partir de los treinta, los hombres producen menos
testosterona, lo cual, en casos extremos, puede provocar una disminución del
apetito sexual e incluso disfunción eréctil. Obviamente, hay más factores que
podrían influir en la disminución de los niveles de testosterona
después de los treinta años —como el estilo de vida, el peso o la salud
mental—, pero teniendo en cuenta que somos la generación de los
eternos niños adultos, me preguntaba si
este descenso de la libido suponía un problema ahora que nos estamos haciendo
mayores y cómo lidiamos con él, y si es un tema biológico o existen otras
razones sociológicas.
Hablé con Yvon Dallaire, psicóloga francocanadiense y
escritora experta en cuestiones de relaciones humanas, quien sostiene que no se
trata de un problema de testosterona: "A los treinta todavía se es demasiado
joven como para empezar a experimentar una disminución de la libido. En
general, los niveles de testosterona del hombre están en su punto álgido entre
los 14 y los 40 años, aproximadamente, edad a partir de la cual empiezan a
descender progresivamente. Sin embargo, un hombre a los treinta y tantos suele
tener cierto bagaje sexual, lo que le permite gestionar mejor su libido y evita
que dependa tanto de ella". En otras palabras, los chicos piensan menos con la
polla cuanto más mayores son.
Julien* tiene 32 años. Somos amigos de nuestra época de
universitarios, cuando también empezó a salir con la que todavía hoy es su
novia. "La verdad es que es un alivio pensar menos con la polla", explica. "Yo
era de los que quería sexo a todas horas en una relación y me frustraba cuando
a mi pareja no le apetecía. Ahora suele ser ella la que toma la iniciativa,
cosa que me encanta. La pubertad fue una etapa bastante difícil: me dolían los
huevos muy a menudo y constantemente sentía la necesidad de masturbarme. No
echo nada de menos esa época".
Como era de esperar, ese cambio de actitud afectó a su
novia, Solange. "Me asusté un poco, porque estaba muy acostumbrada a que siempre
me pidiera hacerlo", me cuenta. "Ahora es mejor; era un poco incómodo para los
dos tener rechazarlo cuando me buscaba. Al principio incluso llegué a pensar
que ya no le gustaba o que me estaba engañando, pero no (al menos, eso creo)".
Eliot tiene 32 años y fue mi jefe. Asegura que no ha perdido
nada de apetito sexual y atribuye cualquier alteración en la frecuencia con que
lo hace a la "falta de tiempo". "La peor edad son los quince, cuando tienes las
hormonas a punto de explotar y las mujeres que te gustan solo tienen ojos para
los tíos mayores que tú", añade. Me encanta imaginármelo como un
adolescente salido, confuso y desesperado.
Louis tiene 38 años, está casado y hace poco ha tenido su
primer hijo. Coincide totalmente con Yvon Dallaire: "Estoy menos obsesionado
con el sexo de lo que solía estar, supongo que gracias a la experiencia que he
ido adquiriendo", explica. Cuando era joven veía muchas películas porno, algo
que también ha dejado de hacer con el tiempo. "Ya no me apetece ver porno, y
tampoco me hace falta. Ahora es más difícil complacerme, por lo que si veo
porno, tiene que ser algo más sugerente".
"Veo mucho menos porno que hace un par de años", afirma
George, de 30 años, cuyo rasgo característico es el gorro de lana que le hizo
su madre y que siempre lleva puesto. "Antes me ponía películas todos los días;
sentía esa necesidad. Sin embargo, cuando lo hacía me sentía culpable y
desorientado, como un trozo de carne triste con la polla todavía en la mano,
mientras el vídeo seguía reproduciéndose. Ahora solo veo porno dos veces por
semana, y si puede ser, un vídeo en que la mujer también disfrute".
Los hombres acumulan experiencias sexuales y, para cuando
tienen treinta y tantos, las mujeres dejan de ser un misterio para ellos y
viceversa. "Creo que las relaciones entre hombres y mujeres se vuelven más
sinceras con la edad y la sexualidad, más interesante", argumenta Eliot.
Muchos de los hombres con los que hablé afirman con
rotundidad que son mucho menos egoístas en la cama que antes, aunque a mí me
dio la sensación de que alguno que otro mentía más que otra cosa, básicamente
porque uno de ellos se puso muy cerca de mí en una discoteca a las 4 de la
madrugada, mientras me gritaba al oído con la mano puesta en mi hombro. Pero en
general, tiene sentido: cuanta menos urgencia y presión haya y mayor sea la
conexión entre ambos, mejor debería ser el sexo. La mayoría de los chicos con
los que hablé llegaron a la misma conclusión, que Eliot resumió a la
perfección: "En general, prefiero mi vida sexual a los 32 a la que tenía con
22".
Todo eso es fantástico, pero ¿qué hay de las mujeres? Pues
la evolución de la sexualidad de las mujeres heterosexuales toma derroteros
distintos: las hay que necesitan tiempo para superar sus inseguridades y
aceptar o entender que están más preocupadas por que su ropa interior no está
conjuntada o porque les cuelga el culo de lo que lo están sus parejas. Pero una
vez salvado ese escollo, pueden surgir cosas muy interesantes. Como me explicó
Yvon Dallaire: "Para muchas jóvenes, inicialmente el sexo se resume en el
potencial. Una vez que la mujer sabe qué es lo que le proporciona placer,
aumenta su deseo sexual hasta los 45, edad a la que está en el apogeo de sus
capacidades".
O, según mi amiga Zoé: "Me da la sensación de que te pasas
años intentando librarte de todos tus complejos y restricciones morales para
poder disfrutar". Tal vez, pues, podamos decir que, pese a que hombres y
mujeres siguen caminos distintos, ambos terminan más o menos igual: menos
obsesionados con nosotros mismos y más preparados para disfrutar de una buena
fornicación festiva. ¿No es ese el propósito de la vida, a fin de cuentas?
*Se han cambiado los
nombres de las personas que aparecen en este artículo.
Que la historia reciente de España se estudia de tapadillo en los colegios es algo que todos hemos vivido y que nadie podrá negar con demasiada convicción. De ese carencia se ocupa el historiador Fernando Hernández Sánchez en su nuevo libro, 'El bulldozer negro del general Franco' (Pasado y Presente), o la historia del siglo XX español para jóvenes. Un texto para "nativos digitales" cuyas visiones sobre el franquismo y la Transición son menos edulcoradas y más crudas que las de los típicos textos escolares.
Hérnandez Sánchez, profesor de historia y autor de ensayos de referencia como 'Guerra y revolución', no ha pretendido "suplir los manuales escolares" sino "problematizar el pasado, sacar a la luz su faz compleja, contradictoria, poliédrica y, en ocasiones, atroz, sin la cual la historia deja de ser lo que es para convertirse en un cuento".
PREGUNTA. ¿Por qué no se enseña bien la historia española del siglo XX en los colegios?
RESPUESTA. Hay un primer rango de explicaciones, consistente en lo que alumnos y profesores dicen que ocurre: la extensión de los temarios y la escasez de tiempo son dos de las causas interrelacionadas más invocadas. En cierta medida, es verdad. La Historia Contemporánea -la que se imparte en 4º ESO y 1º Bachillerato de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales- es la única fase de la Historia que permanece abierta, desde la revolución francesa hasta nuestros días. Claro, cuando en el siglo XIX se tipifica la división cuatripartita de la Historia (Antigua, Medieval, Moderna y Contemporánea, con el añadido de la Prehistoria al comienzo de todo), la Bastilla aún humeaba, pero hoy, hablar de Luis XVI y Robespierre como unos contemporáneos parece algo excesivo. Sin embargo, los planes de estudio no se han atrevido a redimensionar el marco cronológico, por lo que es cierto que el docente y sus estudiantes tiene que impartir y asimilar en un tiempo récord procesos complejos como las revoluciones política e industrial, los nacionalismos, el imperialismo, la revolución soviética, los fascismos, las guerras mundiales, la guerra fría, la descolonización... hasta la globalización actual.
Como la historia del siglo XX español se localiza, si se sigue estrictamente la programación, en el último trimestre, las excusas para extenderse en todo lo que precede están servidas. Y digo excusas porque nada impide proceder a una selección de contenidos para llegar a este periodo con cierta comodidad. Pero ahí juegan, entonces, las motivaciones (o mejor sería decir, desmotivaciones) ocultas: obviando los temas de la República, la guerra civil y el franquismo, cierto profesorado se ahorra controversias desagradables y, quien sabe, problemas fuera del aula. Quizás porque, como hicieron célebre dos historiadores franceses, Eric Conan y Henry Rousso para el caso de Vichy, esos episodios son para nosotros, como sociedad, "un pasado que no pasa".
P. ¿Cuáles son las carencias historiográficas más graves?
R. Las hay de dos clases: las que se derivan de la reiteración de errores y lugares comunes, hoy desechados por la investigación realizada en las últimas décadas, y las que son fruto de la invisibilidad de elementos claves para comprender nuestra historia reciente. Resulta evidente la falta de trasposición de la investigación historiográfica actualizada. Aún es escaso el traslado a los manuales de, por ejemplo, los aportes de Herbert Southworth y Paul Preston sobre el golpe de estado; de los trabajos de Ángel Viñas o Enrique Moradiellos sobre la internacionalización del conflicto; de los estudios de Gabriel Cardona o Michel Alpert sobre la dinámica militar; de las reflexiones de Julio Aróstegui, Helen Graham o Alberto Reig Tapia sobre la dinámica política y social; de las conclusiones sobre la violencia y la represión de Julián Casanova, Francisco Espinosa, Francisco Moreno o Ricard Vinyes. La apuesta por un cierto diseño temático tiene como consecuencia la generalización de una visión teleológica -aquella en el que el final está predeterminado por la propia evolución de los acontecimientos-: la indisoluble unión de Segunda República y guerra civil condena a aquella como fatal preámbulo de esta.
El franquismo queda encapsulado en su propia temporalidad, ajeno a su origen en y como agente causante de la guerra civil, como si la dictadura no se hubiese reivindicado hasta el final a sí misma como “el Estado del 18 de julio” y su régimen no hubiera sido, parafraseando a Clausewitz, la continuación de la guerra civil por otros medios. Queda, asimismo, separado de la democracia actual, cuya genealogía se construye sobre su superación, obviando las inercias, las contradicciones y los conflictos insertos en el complejo proceso evolutivo que condujo hasta la democracia. Un acotamiento que con el resurgir de tendencias revisionistas a comienzos del siglo XXI ha dado lugar a que el franquismo haya llegado a ser designado con vergonzantes o ridículos eufemismos: “el régimen anterior” o “el periodo predemocrático”.
Al mismo tiempo, es preciso también resaltar lo que los manuales invisibilizan. Episodios como la entidad y magnitud del exilio, la quiebra cultural sufrida por la expatriación de artistas e intelectuales, la resistencia interior y la llevada a cabo en los territorios ocupados por el Eje durante la segunda guerra mundial, la tragedia de los españoles internados en los campos nazis, las cárceles, las obras públicas y los trabajos forzados, la represión política y las ejecuciones, desde 1939 a 1975, las leyes de excepción y los tribunales especiales (entre ellos, el Tribunal de Orden Público –TOP-), la clandestinidad, el movimiento obrero, las huelgas de Asturias en 1962 o el Proceso 1001, el movimiento estudiantil y vecinal, el reverso del desarrollismo –la migración interior y exterior, las precarias condiciones de vida en los barrios de aluvión-, la Ley de Peligrosidad Social, la censura y la represión moral e intelectual y, en definitiva, la dramática aritmética del franquismo no reciben la atención proporcional para la correcta valoración del precio que se hubo de pagar por la consecución de las libertades.
P. Mencionas varias encuestas a estudiantes que demuestran su precario conocimiento de la historia española reciente. ¿Cómo interpretas esos datos?
R. Como un preocupante déficit no solo cultural, sino también democrático. Algo no se ha hecho bien cuando, de cien alumnos en el ecuador de sus estudios de magisterio encuestados en el curso 2013/14, el 30% no sabía cuántos años estuvo Franco en el poder (creen que menos de 30 años); el 45% desconocía qué fue el maquis; el 71,6% ignoraba en qué consistió el proceso 1.001 (el 19% cree que fue la ejecución de 1.000 presos políticos); el 58% desconocía qué fue el Tribunal de Orden Público; el 79,5% no sabía en qué año se produjeron las últimas ejecuciones en España (casi un 40% desconocía incluso que las hubiera habido); el 47% no sabía en qué año se aprobó la actual Constitución.
Un 98% y un 95% identificó Cuelgamuros y el 'Guernica' de Picasso entre los hitos monumentales de nuestro pasado reciente, pero solo un 66% y un 45% respectivamente acertó a contextualizarlos (nadie reconoció ni supo explicar, sin embargo, el monumento a los abogados laboralistas de Atocha y menos del 7% lo hizo con el monumento a la Constitución de 1978). Entre los personajes emblemáticos, solo Felipe González (65%) y Adolfo Suárez (54%) fueron identificados por la mitad o más de los encuestados. Cabe destacar que 8 de cada 10 dijeron desconocer a personalidades relevantes como Dolores Ibárruri, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Juan Negrín o el general Mola.
Sostengo, en consecuencia, que conviene otorgar a la Historia contemporánea más próxima, aquella que aún ejerce efectos visibles en los niveles social, político y cultural en la sociedad en la que nuestros estudiantes se van a integrar, los privilegios de un trato preferente en nuestro sistema educativo -quizás con un curso específico, como en Francia- con el fin de que se adquieran los conocimientos y se ejerciten los recursos analíticos y críticos que se deben demandar a una ciudadanía activa y comprometida con la democracia y el progreso.
Máxime cuando, como estamos viendo en Europa durante los últimos tiempos, las corrientes populistas y xenófobas que evocan lo peor de la historia reciente parecen cobrar nuevos bríos. La enseñanza de la Historia reciente en la educación secundaria es, a mi juicio, un imperativo cívico.
P. En el libro criticas los lugares comunes de nuestra historia reciente. ¿Cuáles son los más evidentes? ¿Han calado estos lugares comunes?
R. Parto de la base, como dije anteriormente, de que los avances experimentados en la investigación historiográfica puntera no se han incorporado al currículum académico. Solo así se explica que los libros de texto sigan repitiendo, en no pocos casos, errores o lugares comunes que los estudios han arrinconado hace ya años. No es raro seguir leyendo que, bajo la República se produjeron oleadas de huelgas, quemas de iglesias y enfrentamientos armados grupos antagonistas, amalgamando la expresión del legítimo ejercicio de un derecho constitucional con manifestaciones de piromanía anticlerical y actos terroristas, muy al estilo de los discursos coetáneos de Gil Robles. O que el monárquico José Calvo Sotelo, con 12 escaños frente a los 88 de la Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), era el líder de la oposición en un parlamento con 473 diputados. O que su asesinato fue el desencadenante de la guerra civil, obviando lo que hoy sabemos acerca del tiempo largo de la trama conspirativa, de las directivas del general Mola y de los contratos para el suministro de aviones italianos a los futuros sublevados con fecha previa al 18 de julio.
Se abunda en la pendiente violenta en la que acabó por precipitarse la República sin atender a la taxonomía de los hechos y las víctimas que han aportado trabajos como los de González Calleja. Se incide en la fuerte influencia comunista (2 carteras de un total de 11) en los gobiernos del doctor Juan Negrín, o en el fracaso en su benemérita tarea del Comité de No Intervención, impotente para impedir el suministro de material de guerra y técnicos por parte de la Unión Soviética al ejército republicano, y de ayuda alemana e italiana a Franco, como si hubieran sido simultaneas y de idéntica magnitud, pese a los trabajos de Moradiellos y Viñas. Se afirma que la represión en las retaguardias fue parecida y que la guerra desató el odio y la venganza incontrolada, como si toda la violencia hubiese sido irracional, espontánea y carente de raíces. Una teoría del empate sangriento que ha quedado demolida por las aportaciones de Francisco Espinosa, Julián Casanova o Francisco Moreno, entre otros.
Se insiste en la vieja historia del desaire de Franco a Hitler en Hendaya; en el “milagro económico” del desarrollismo –una década de las cuatro que abarcó la dictadura-; en la aparente estabilidad política del régimen frente a una oposición dispersa y desorganizada; y en el relato de una Transición pacífica y modélica en la que el consenso se superpone a una violencia –terrorista y paraestatal- difuminada.
Que el resultado es un arraigo de estos lugares comunes lo demuestra el sondeo que realizó el Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) en febrero de 2010, con motivo de la entrada en vigor de conocida como ley de memoria histórica. De las tres mil personas que respondieron a su cuestionario, el 40% afirmó que la culpa del estallido de la guerra civil la tuvieron los dos “bandos” por igual y el 36% que ambos causaron las mismas víctimas. El 58% afirmó que “el franquismo tuvo cosas buenas y cosas malas” y un 35% valoró que, con Franco, “había más orden y paz”, aunque a continuación, un 80 y un 88% admitiesen, respectivamente, que durante ese periodo se violaron los derechos humanos y no había libertad de expresión. El 74% creía que la Transición constituye un motivo de orgullo para los españoles, aunque el 56% ignorase cuándo se aprobó la constitución. Como dato revelador, el 69% afirmó que recibieron poca o ninguna información sobre la guerra civil en el colegio o el instituto.
P. ¿Se ha dulcificado nuestra visión del franquismo? ¿Por qué?
R. Digamos que se ha banalizado. El alejamiento en el tiempo y el inexorable trabajo de la biología, acabando con las generaciones que lo vivieron, puede conducir a un desdibujamiento de sus aristas. Pero no hay que perder la perspectiva: a pesar de los cambios de apariencia experimentados en su larga existencia, el franquismo se mantuvo invariable en aspectos como la negación de las libertades básicas y de la pluralidad de partidos, la concentración de todo el poder en manos del dictador y el carácter centralista de un Estado donde no cabían ni la divergencia de intereses de clase, ni la diversidad de realidades nacionales o regionales. Francisco Franco acumuló en su persona la mayor concentración de poder de la historia contemporánea de España desde los tiempos de la monarquía absolutista de Fernando VII. Y lo ejerció con iguales o superiores dosis de despotismo.
Todos los ingredientes del franquismo permanecieron inalterados, aunque dada su dilatada duración, se hizo necesario que mutaran algunas de sus formas externas. Su plena identificación original con el fascismo dio paso, por motivos evidentes, a expresiones menos chirriantes en la búsqueda de la necesaria respetabilidad internacional durante la guerra fría, en un mundo en el que los saludos a la romana y los gritos de ritual habían quedado sepultados bajo los escombros de las águilas y las fasces de piedra.
El proceso estuvo guiado por un interés de adecuación y supervivencia, como las adaptaciones que obligan a las especies animales a aclimatarse a los cambios en el entorno o desaparecer. Pueden modificarse las apariencias externas, suavizarse los colmillos, hacerse retráctiles las garras y suavizarse la piel escamada pero, bajo ella, el reptil permanece. Resulta curioso que, para determinados analistas, el franquismo se beneficie de una mirada absolutoria por el hecho de que llegara a viejo. Ninguno de ellos, seguro, dudaría de que en la base del sistema soviético, ya fuera en la época de Lenin y Stalin o de sus sucesores, Khruschev o Brezniev, y a pesar de las evidentes diferencias entre sus respectivos estilos de ejercicio del poder, existiera otra cosa que no fuera el comunismo. Pero, al parecer, como rezaba la propaganda del Ministerio de Información y Turismo de la época, Spain is different.
El franquismo no puede quedar asociado al concepto de paz del que participan las sociedades civiles basadas en la libertad y el entendimiento democrático. En el imaginario colectivo, el recuerdo del baño de sangre original; el silencio de los vencidos, heredado por la generación de sus hijos; el desapego por la política; la tolerancia con la corrupción; la general presunción de deshonestidad en los gobernantes de cualquier tendencia, pero sin que una coherente reacción colectiva destinada a erradicarla; la consolidación, en definitiva, de un bajo nivel de exigencia para con los representantes públicos y de ejercicio crítico por parte de la ciudadanía es la herencia que la sociedad española debe a Franco mucho tiempo después de su muerte.
We have a lot to thank the pill for: sexual liberation, better reproductive rights, and marginally less agonizing period pains, among others. But in the 60 years since it became widely available, there's been a dire lack of innovation in contraceptive methods. With 10.6 million users in the USA, big pharmaceutical companies have continued to benefit from the widespread use of the pill and face little in the way of competition.
One area that has seen some movement recently is the use of longer term contraceptive methods. Increasing numbers of women are turning to IUDs and the implant, thanks to the US introduction of the Affordable Care Act, which offers these devices free. But despite the widespread availability of these other proven and effective methods in the Western world, many women are also turning to less researched methods.
One of these methods is natural family planning, which is back in vogue thanks to a number of apps that simplify the lengthy process of tracking your menstrual cycle to predict when you are most likely to get pregnant.
One such app, called Natural Cycles, just surpassed 100,000 users. All it requires is for you to pop a thermometer in your mouth every morning, before you get out of bed or move too much, and record the results. Its algorithm uses these results to gets to know your body, so it can tell you when exactly you can expect your period and when your six-day fertile window is.
If you don't put enough data in, it will simply give you more 'red days' when you're not safe to have unprotected sex. It's joined a growing market of period trackers and fertility apps such as Eve by Glow, Kindara, and CycleBeads that tout themselves as effective, non-hormonal methods of family planning.
Beside the fact that these apps still put the lion's share—if not all—of the responsibility for contraception on women, they also highlight another huge issue in birth control: the risk of user failure.
When researchers and doctors talk about different methods of family planning, they normally use two metrics: user failure and method failure. The number one reason that contraception methods don't work is because of user failure, not method failure. Remembering to take a pill every day is one thing, but remembering to take your temperature and hoping you've recorded everything properly? That's quite another.
Laura*, 27, stopped using the pill because of anxiety, weight gain, and mood swings. She now uses Natural Cycles instead. "it isn't the most convenient thing to use," she says. "I went into it thinking it would be really easy, but now I worry that maybe I'm not following the instructions well enough. It's also very easy to forget to do. I often go to the bathroom and then realize that I should have taken my temperature before."
Natural Cycles users measure their temperature with a thermometer every day. Photo via Natural Cycles
Fertility awareness practitioner Sarah Panzetta has used natural family planning since a pill-related pregnancy scare in 1996, and has recently started using an app too. But even she isn't completely comfortable with the rising use of these methods. "The potential is amazing but I think the reality is falling quite short of what people actually need," she says. "One thing that concerns me about some of the apps and some of the natural birth control methods is that they can be overenthusiastic about it and completely dismiss the pill and other forms of contraception."
So should we welcome these technological innovations, even if they rely on more traditional methods of birth control? Dr Philippa Kaye, an expert in pregnancy and women's health, thinks so: "Women have been doing this for a long time, it might not be through an app but they've been measuring their temperature and looking at their vaginal mucus. This may help you do that, but I don't think it's the answer to contraception."
Then of course there's the small matter of lifestyle. If you're in a long term relationship and trust yourself to remember to take your temperature every morning, then natural family planning methods could be great. If you party, drink a lot, and don't think you'd remember to take your temperature the whole time, you'd find yourself with an awful lot of 'red days' when you can't have unprotected sex.
Raoul Scherwitzl, one half of the husband and wife physicist duo who developed Natural Cycles, still sees this as easier to use than the pill. "Unlike the pill, that you have to take everyday, you don't have to enter data everyday into the app—it's OK to skip these days, like on weekends for example," he says. "The cleaner the data, the more green days there will be. So if you almost never measure or party everyday, then you will have either no or very fluctuating data point, so you will only end up with red days."
Eve by Glow and Natural Cycles both undertake research and clinical trials to help improve their offering. "In a month we'll have a new clinical study that shows we have as low a failure rate as the contraceptive pill," explains Scherwitzl. He claims that their research shows that only five women in 1,000 who aren't trying to conceive will get pregnant in the space of a year, as long as they use the app correctly. That's a 0.5% chance of unwanted pregnancy. When you compare those stats to the reliability of other forms of contraception (according to the NHS condoms are 98 percent reliable and the pill 99 percent, if used correctly) there's little difference. But again, we're talking method effectiveness here—not user effectiveness.
Risks aside, anything that helps us better understand family planning and the female body is, obviously, a good thing. As these companies mine data from hundreds of thousands of women—data which, despite privacy concerns, both Eve by Glow and Natural Cycles privacy policies assure is anonymous and not passed onto third parties without user permission—we can only be getting closer to a time when women won't have to put up with contraception that don't suit them simply out of a lack of options.
Reporters from Fairfax Media and The Huffington Post obtained a huge trove of email from Unaoil, a business run by a rich Monaco family, that reveal that the family ran a corrupt bribery empire that spanned the world's oil-producing states, and that they world with companies like Rolls-Royce, Halliburton, Leighton Holding, Samsung and Hyundai, to rig contracts through a system of bribes and kickbacks that looted the national treasuries of some of the world's poorest countries.
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After watching it gather dust for several months, Albuquerque native Katherine Samson has begrudgingly accepted that her expensive sex swing would only ever be used to rock her boyfriend Clark during his panic attacks.
“It cost me like $230, but I figured it would pay for itself in orgasms,” Samson explains. “But now it just hangs in the living room until Clark’s anxiety reaches a peak every couple weeks. The rocking really helps him calm down, which is good, but…” She trails off, staring at her own crotch. “I just wish we could use it for sex.”
One day Samson came home to find her sobbing boyfriend rocking in the swing. “At first, I thought he was waiting to surprise me with sex since he was completely nude, but then he told me he had just watched a documentary on student debt, and he was convinced he’d wasted his whole life,” Samson explains, shaking her head. “I guess he had just stripped off all of his clothes in a cold sweat during a scene where they talk about the interest rates of private loans.” She adds, “He has a therapist and a prescription for Klonopin, but he really prefers the swing.”
Samson bought the swing in an effort to rejuvenate her relationship with Clark. For several weeks the couple talked about using the swing, but always opted to half-heartedly dry hump on the couch while watching True Blood instead. “One time we were both horny for it, but the cat was sleeping on [the swing], so we both just napped instead.”
Other times Clark has used the soothing motion of the sex swing to calm himself include an unfortunate trip to H&M that made him feel old, a time he thought he saw Philip Seymour Hoffman on the street then remembered he had died, and a summer day on which he accidentally swallowed a firefly.
“I bought the fuck swing thinking it’d inspire a sexual peak,” Samson says, “but instead it’s been home to some of the unsexiest moments in my entire life.”
When asked if she had any advice for women in similar situations Samson says, “Honestly, by the time you know there’s a problem, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it.” When asked if she was referring to the sex swing or Clark, Samson declined to comment.
A bit tired of those beauty-as-goodness and marriage-as-happiness themes? Feminist Fairytales is a web series that retells some classic fairytales with a feminist twist. While a lot of these Disney stories have valuable lessons, it’s hard not to watch them now with some sarcastic commentary, which Sarah Ann Masse happily provides in her readings of Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. Directed by Man Powered Films (Mark Philip Lichtenstein), written by Nick Afka Thomas and Sarah Ann Masse (We Are Thomasse) Feminist Fairytales pokes some fun at the ways they prioritize romantic relationships and the creepiness that pervades them.
Masse gestures towards the explicitly creepy like the princely habits of kissing unconscious women and some of the more subtle themes. (Actually though, why does a baby have to physically beautiful? It’s. An. Infant.) Of course, we can see a lot of female heroines who’ve come out in animation and Disney stories but these stories have longer histories and aren’t too easy to escape.
What did you think about Feminist Fairytales? More broadly, how do you approach talking about these themes critically when they’re stories usually told to children? I remember babysitting a girl who loved everything Disney-princess and while lots of these stories have great lessons that I think everyone can get behind, it can be difficult to try and bring up some of the more subtle things embedded in the romance plots.
Well, I'm here today to relieve some social media stress because there's a way to use TWO FILTERS at once on any snap you take! NON-PHOTOSHOPPED, COLD, HARD PROOF FROM MY VERY OWN SNAPCHAT:
En 1977, la vida del antropólogo Joseph Campbell sufrió un giro inusual para un profesor de universidad y, además, lo hizo por un asunto totalmente ajeno a la investigación científica.
El estreno y posterior éxito de La guerra de las galaxias provocó que la obra de este discípulo de Carl Gustav Jung y estudioso de los mitos llegase al gran público. Georges Lucas, autor de la saga, reconoció que su obra debía mucho a El héroe de las mil caras, uno de los trabajos más conocidos de Campbell, en la que el antropólogo explica la estructura de los mitos, su función en nuestra sociedad y, más concretamente, el «camino del héroe».
Según Campbell, todo héroe que se precie se debate entre dos mundos, el ordinario y el sobrenatural o extraordinario. Además, todos debían enfrentarse a un desafío. Todos debían negarse a emprender dicha aventura. Todos encontraban un mentor más experimentado o una fuerza sobrenatural que los adiestraba. Todos se enfrentaban a peligros que suponían cambios traumáticos en ellos, entre los que cabe la mutilación o la pérdida de un ser querido. Todos sufrían un renacimiento o resurrección que los transformaba en una persona distinta a la que comenzó la aventura y, finalmente, todos regresaban a su lugar de origen, poseedores de una sabiduría que servirá de ayuda a aquellos que los esperan en el mundo ordinario.
Una evolución que George Lucas sabía que tenía sobrada eficacia narrativa desde hacía siglos y que era válida para cualquier héroe en cualquier época. Desde Gilgamesh a Odiseo, Eneas y, por supuesto, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo o, en palabras de Campbell, el mismísimo John Lennon.
De hecho, la admiración que el director de Star Wars profesaba por Campbell hizo que se encontrasen en diferentes ocasiones en el Rancho Skywalker, hasta el punto de que fue ese el escenario de El poder del mito, una serie de entrevistas documentales que el periodista Bill Moyers realizó con Campbell entre 1985 y 1986.
La transcripción ampliada de esos encuentros, completada con nuevos textos, ha sido recientemente recuperada con ese mismo título por la editorial Capitán Swing.
Joseph Campbell había nacido en el estado de Nueva York en el seno de una familia católica. Desde pequeño y gracias a su padre, comenzó a familiarizarse con la cultura y tradiciones de los nativos norteamericanos y, aunque se licenció en Literatura Inglesa y Medieval, comenzó de manera autodidacta estudios de antropología.
Durante la depresión de 1929, Campbell se encontró con que no tenía trabajo. Estuvo así durante cinco años. «No me sentía pobre», declaró, «solo que no tenía dinero. En aquel entonces la gente era muy buena entre sí. Por ejemplo, yo descubrí a Frobenius. Me asaltó repentinamente y tuve que leer todo lo que hubiera escrito Frobenius. Así que escribí a una librería que había descubierto en la ciudad de Nueva York y me mandaron todos aquellos libros diciéndome que no tenía que pagarlos hasta que no consiguiera un empleo… cosa que sucedió cuatro años después».
Durante todo ese tiempo estuvo preparándose como antropólogo, residiendo en una humilde cabaña del condado de Woodstock que su dueño alquilaba por 20 dólares anuales a jóvenes prometedores en el mundo de las artes.
Su formación católica, sus conocimientos de la cultura nativa americana, su posterior contacto con las tradiciones de la India y Oriente y los cuatro años de estudios en el campo de la antropología permitieron a Campbell determinar que en todas esas civilizaciones existía un elemento común: el mito.
Además, su interés por la obra de Carl Gustav Jung le mostraría que muchos de esos mitos trascendían lugares geográficos y momentos temporales estando presentes aunque revestidos de diferentes apariencias en la práctica totalidad de esas culturas, conclusión que aportaba a sus investigaciones una complejidad mayor de la de obras de otros antropólogos de renombre como Fazer o Eliade.
El mito, pensaba Campbell, era algo más que una narración fantástica tradicional que se había transmitido a lo largo de los siglos, hasta el punto de tener una importante función tanto para la sociedad en la que surge como para los individuos de esa comunidad.
El primero de sus libros en solitario sobre el tema sería El héroe de las mil caras, publicado en 1948 con el título de Cómo leer un mito, al que seguirían, entre otros muchos trabajos, los cuatro tomos de Las máscaras de Dios, La imagen del mito y El poder del mito.
Mientras que la mayoría de sus obras podrían ser consideradas textos científicos, El poder del mito tiene una vocación eminentemente divulgativa hasta el punto de ser un texto muy indicado para aquellos que quieran familiarizarse con la obra de Campbell antes de abordar obras más densas.
Guiado a través de las preguntas de Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell va desgranando las bases de sus investigaciones y explicando la importancia que los mitos, a pesar de lo que pensemos, continúan teniendo en nuestra civilización y en nuestra vida, tanto consciente como inconsciente.
En palabras de Campbell, los humanos actuales tenemos «el mismo cuerpo, con los mismos órganos y energías que el hombre de Cromañón hace treinta mil años. Al vivir una vida humana en la ciudad de Nueva York o al vivirla en las cavernas, pasas por los mismos estadios de la infancia, la llegada de la madurez sexual, la transformación de la dependencia infantil en la responsabilidad de la vida adulta, el matrimonio; después la decadencia del cuerpo, la pérdida gradual de sus poderes y la muerte. Tienes el mismo cuerpo, las mismas experiencias corporales, de ahí que respondas a las mismas imágenes».
Campbell incluso incorpora a sus investigaciones toda la información y memoria que el ser humano trae consigo desde el momento de su nacimiento: «el bebé sabe qué hacer con el pezón en la boca. Hay todo un sistema de acción innata que, cuando lo vemos en animales, lo llamamos instinto. Es la base biológica. Pero entonces pueden suceder algunas cosas que hacen repulsivos, difíciles, atemorizantes o pecaminosos algunos actos que uno se siente impulsado a realizar, y es entonces cuando empezamos a padecer nuestros más molestos problemas psicológicos».
De esta forma, aunque cambien el aspecto externo de la narración según la sociedad en la que aparezcan, el mensaje que subyace al mito permanece y puede servirnos para explicar y resolver esos problemas psicológicos que surgen de la divergencia entre nuestros deseos y los límites de nuestro entorno.
El problema que surge entonces es el de saber interpretar esos mitos que no se manifiestan, precisamente, de una forma clara e inequívoca, sino a través de metáforas y símbolos. «Si piensas que la metáfora constituye en sí misma la referencia, sería como ir a un restaurante, pedir la carta, ver la palabra chuleta escrita ahí y empezar a comerse la carta», explica Campbell.
La interpretación de las metáforas correspondería a aquellos que están familiarizados con lo elevado y que, en el caso de los mitos, serían los chamanes en sentido estricto o en sentido figurado, por ejemplo, los antropólogos o psicoterapeutas.
Ante este hecho, Moyers pregunta si los sacerdotes actuales podrían ser sujetos capaces de interpretar el mito, algo que Campbell rechaza: «La diferencia entre un sacerdote y un chamán es que el sacerdote es un funcionario, y un chamán es alguien que ha recorrido una experiencia. En nuestra tradición es el monje el que busca la experiencia, mientras que el sacerdote es el que ha estudiado para servir a la comunidad» y, continúa, la autoridad del chamán «procede de una experiencia psicológica, no de una ordenación social», como sucede con el sacerdote.
A continuación, Campbell introduce el concepto de «ritual», al cual define como «la representación de un mito. Al participar de un ritual estás participando de un rito», dice. De ahí la importancia de que los rituales se mantengan en muchas de las actividades de la sociedad, no tanto por cuestiones de mera tradición o estética, sino porque permiten interpretar un misterio de nuestra vida.
El matrimonio, las tomas de posesión de los gobernantes, la teatralidad de los juicios, las graduaciones de los estudiantes entendidas como ritos de paso al mundo adulto, incluso las misas o cualquier otro acto religioso, son eventos que nos permiten entrar en contacto con el mito y, en consecuencia, entender un poco mejor cómo funciona el entorno en el que vivimos y lo que somos.
Los rituales son un vehículo para abstraernos de la realidad cotidiana que habitamos pero, se queja Campbell, «los rituales que antes eran portadores de una realidad interior, ahora son meras formas», y carga contra las renovaciones que, en ese sentido, han incorporado instituciones como la Iglesia católica modernizando el rito, eliminando el latín, oficiando la misa de frente a los fieles o cambiando la estructura de las iglesias y catedrales haciéndolas más diáfanas y elegantes. «En la catedral no existe el menor interés por la visibilidad. La mayor parte de lo que sucede tiene lugar fuera de tu campo de visión. Pero lo importante allí es el símbolo, no el espectáculo. El espectáculo se lo saben todos de memoria. Lo conocen desde los seis años».
Llegamos aquí a otro de los puntos claves de los postulados de Campbell. El que se refiere a cómo la arquitectura de una ciudad es también reflejo de ese material simbólico y vehículo de transmisión del mito.
Las catedrales, los palacios, los edificios públicos dan mucha información sobre las bases en las que se asienta la sociedad que los construyó. «Cuando te acercas a una ciudad medieval, la catedral es lo más alto que hay. Cuando te acercas a una ciudad del siglo XVIII el palacio político es el más alto. Y cuando te acercas a una ciudad moderna, los edificios más altos son los de oficinas, los centros de la vida económica».
Si el mito es tan trascendente en nuestra estructura social y especialmente en nuestra construcción personal, ¿quiénes son hoy en día los transmisores de ese material mítico?, pregunta Bill Moyers a Joseph Campbell quien, sin dudar, responde que los escritores y los poetas.
Campbell, quien en su juventud dividió el día en tres periodos de 8 horas dedicando dos de ellos a la lectura y uno a dormir, anima a leer todo aquello que tenga un vínculo emocional con el lector aunque esté ajeno a las modas o las tendencias del mercado editorial: «lee libros buenos, escritos por buenos escritores. Tu mente ascenderá a ese nivel y tendrás un hermoso, suave y prolongado éxtasis. Cuando encuentres un autor que realmente te atrape, lee todo lo que haya escrito. No digas “Oh, ahora quiero ver qué hizo fulano” y no te molestes en absoluto con la lista de best sellers. Lee todo lo que ese autor tenga para darte. Y después, lee lo que él haya leído. Comprobarás que el mundo se abre de un modo consecuente con un cierto punto de vista», dice antes de enunciar el siguiente estadio de su razonamiento: «el camino de la felicidad».
Para Campbell, solo el proyecto vital que está en armonía con nuestros verdaderos intereses personales será un proyecto satisfactorio, incluso cuando se desarrolle al margen del concepto que de éxito tiene la sociedad o, lo que es lo mismo, un éxito social no necesariamente estará en relación con un éxito personal. Es más, esa divergencia es, según el antropólogo y discípulo de Jung, una de las causas de la esquizofrenia y la neurosis en mayor o menor grado.
Llegados a este punto, Campbell, como el héroe y como esas personas que en su búsqueda de la felicidad han de recorrer todas las etapas de su aventura, regresa a la aldea de donde salió pero con más sabiduría y portador de un mensaje que compartir con su comunidad.
Un mensaje que se resume en el hecho arriba enunciado de que esa brecha entre la realidad que se vive y la realidad que se desea vivir es más sencilla de armonizar recurriendo a los mitos y a todo el simbolismo que contienen, aunque, como advierte, citando a Carl Gustav Jung: «más te vale no dejarte atrapar en una situación simbólica. No tienes que morir en la realidad, físicamente. Todo lo que tienes que hacer es morir espiritualmente y renacer a un modo de vida más amplio».
O lo que es lo mismo, «aprender de experiencia de Luke debes tú, inmolarte o perder mano, necesario no ser».
One of the benefits of marijuana legalization is the rise of a new, multibillion-dollar industry that provides legal jobs to thousands of taxpaying workers. This is one of the main reasons advocates have used to get legalization enacted in Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, and Alaska.
But how big is that industry, really? A new chart from Statista puts it in context: US purchases of legal marijuana in 2015, counting retail sales in states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational purposes, were bigger than Dasani, Girl Scout cookies, Oreos, and Pringles sales combined in 2014.
The benefits to this are obvious: more jobs and more tax revenue. Colorado, for one, found in 2015 that nearly half of potential summertime visitors cited legal marijuana as an influence for their vacation decisions (although only 8 percent of actual tourists said they visited a marijuana dispensary).
The estimate from Statista, taken from a Marijuana Business Daily report, is likely only the beginning, too. The industry expects to grow dramatically over the next few years, especially as more and bigger states — perhaps California — fully legalize pot.
But there's a downside to this, too: This new industry is interested primarily in getting people to use its new, fun product. And that industry's interests may sometimes come into conflict with public health.
The big public health risk to marijuana legalization
While the massive profits from marijuana are often cited as an advantage to legalizing pot, they also speak to one of the big concerns about legalization.
That concern: Big, for-profit companies will get into the marijuana industry and market the drug in ways that encourage widespread use and abuse.
This isn't unprecedented. Take, for instance, big alcohol companies, which have successfully lobbied to block tax increases and regulations on alcohol — all while marketing the products as fun and sexy on television to millions of people. Meanwhile, alcohol is linked to 88,000 deaths each year in America.
Or look at the ongoing opioid painkiller epidemic. In the past couple of decades, pharmaceutical companies marketed opioid painkillers to doctors as a safe, effective way to treat pain. Their claims turned out to be wrong, and they would end up paying hundreds of millions in fines for their fraudulent claims about opioids' safety. Yet at the end of the day, they made millions of dollars as their marketing scheme worked — and tens of thousands of people got hooked on and died from their products. (Ironically, marijuana could be a safe alternative to opioids for some patients.)
Marijuana is not as dangerous or deadly as alcohol or opioids, but that doesn't mean it's totally safe. There's some evidence it can harm teenage brains. Some studies show it can trigger psychotic episodes for some people.
But a broader, more abstract problem is overuse. As Jon Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, told me last year, "At some level, we know that spending more than half of your waking hours intoxicated for years and years on end is not increasing the likelihood that you'll win a Pulitzer Prize or discover the cure for cancer."
Yet it's exactly these people — the heaviest users — that marijuana companies will try to market to. As a 2014 study of Colorado's pot market found, the top 29.9 percent heaviest pot users in the state made up 87.1 percent of demand for the drug. For the marijuana industry, that makes the heaviest users the most lucrative customers.
That doesn't mean continuing to ban marijuana is a good idea. As I've written before, marijuana is relatively safe enough that even commercialization seems to be a better outcome than prohibition. Pot's illegality, after all, has led to hundreds of thousands of racially disparate arrests each year and has created a black market for pot that in turn helps finance criminal organizations' violent operations around the world.
But it's possible to legalize marijuana in a more responsible way — by, for example, leaving sales to nonprofit businesses and state governments or taxing and regulating pot heavily. That may mean limiting the growth of the legal marijuana industry, but it could lead to better outcomes for public health and safety.
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is really pissed at Germany. According to reports in the German press on Tuesday, he even went so far to summon Germany's ambassador to his office to complain.
But what about? Syria, perhaps? Or Europe's handling of the refugee crisis?
Naw. It was a satirical YouTube video, produced by a German state broadcaster, making fun of Erdogan. Here's the video that offended the Turkish leader's delicate sensibilities, now with helpful English subtitles:
The song, a riff on an old German pop song, pokes fun at Erdogan's appearance, his ostentatious palace, and, most importantly, his dismal record on freedom of the press and civil rights.
"Equal rights for women / Beaten up equally," the lyrics go, sung over footage of Turkish police breaking up an International Women's Day march with batons.
For most heads of state, this wouldn't be something you'd need to yell at a foreign dignitary about. But Erdogan isn't just any head of state: The Turkish president is often described as famously thin-skinned, and he's got a record to prove it.
According to a 2015 BBC report, 236 people in Turkey were investigated, between August 2014 and March 2015, for "insulting the head of state," a crime under Turkish law punishable by years of prison time. Of these, 105 were indicted and eight arrested.
Some of these cases are truly absurd. In 2014, Erdogan saw a teacher who he thought made a "rude gesture" at him. After he complained about her publicly, she was arrested for insulting the president. In January 2016, she was sentenced to 11 months and 20 days in prison.
In another case, a Turkish doctor was arrested for making a meme comparing Erdogan to Gollum. Turkish courts had to bring up "Gollum experts" to assess whether this was insulting. Here is the meme, in case you're curious about whether Erdogan actually looks like Gollum (the answer, IMHO, is clearly yes):
If this all sounds petty, it sure is. But the bigger issue, the one the video is pointing to, is that Turkey under Erdogan has been slowly sliding toward authoritarianism.
During his time in office, the Turkish government has tried to "reform" Turkey's school system along Islamist lines, violently cracked down on anti-government protests, and temporarily banned Twitter to prevent it from being a threat to "moral and national values."
"Comparisons to Vladimir Putin are useful," Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey scholar at St. Lawrence University, wrote last year. "Both Erdogan and Putin voice faith in the institution of elections as a tool for demonstrating legitimacy, and both ensure that no sustained critique of their policies can reach the public."
So as funny as the idea of Erdogan yelling at the German ambassador over a Weird Al–style parody cover may be, it's worth noting that this episode reflects something deeply troubling about politics in one of the world's largest and most important Muslim countries.
But a Polish man named Wojciech Mann is promising a new beer, a beer that will evoke the "quintessence of femininity." He's launched an IndieGoGo campaign on behalf of his company Order of Yoni to fund this brave new product. It's called Bottled Instinct, and if he gets his desired 150,000 euros (about $168,000), it will be the first-ever beer made from the lactic acid bacteria "from vagina of a unique woman." (The IndieGoGo page and the Order of Yoni site are both written in broken English.)
The unique woman in question is a Czech model named Alexandra Brendlova, "the kind of a female whose pheromones will stay with you after the meeting for the following week long."
To his credit, Mann realized that people would have questions and created a handy FAQ to address them. Yes, he reassures potential Bottled Instinct drinkers, this is entirely safe. As for the model's "history," Mann says, "Yes, every model in the beer project has to sign the contract with high penalty for working in adult industry, sex industry, as adult actress, escort, prostitute, etc., etc., etc."
And if you are worried that this beer––with its main selling point being that it once made contact with a lady's genitals–– is sort of gross, the Order of Yoni wants you to know that it is unconcerned about "feminists' attack":
"Firstly, Yoni is a sacred Hindu name of vagina and it symbolizes our respect to vagina as a sacrum. In Indian and many of other cultures sexuality including vagina are parts of sacrum, are respected and we are convinced such respect should be also present in our modern Western culture. Secondly, vaginal lactobacillus bacteria are transferred from a mother to a child during childbirth, so mother's Yoni bacteria are becoming part of child's immune system. The Order believes the beer is a tribute to our mothers and a tribute to the act of childbirth. It is far, far from disrespect for a woman."
Anticipating its first product will be a hit, the Order has listed some plans for future beers, including BDSM ale, "made with smoked plums and vaginal lactic acid bacteria of red-head or brunette model" and a "sour ancient wheat ale with roses" that the company will call "Isis."
So far, the IndieGoGo campaign has raised 11 euros in six days, though Mann is clearly prepared for some major donations: The reward for donating 10,000 euros is 60 bottles of beer made from your girlfriend's vaginal bacteria.
When I mentioned to some male friends that I was working on an article about what happens to the male libido after the age of 30, all of them assured me that they weren't having any problems at all. They had no idea what I was talking about. None at all. But when we got further into it, it turned out things were a little more complicated than that.
I initially wanted to explore the subject and talk to my male heterosexual friends about it because I noticed a shift in the way they talked about sex—and in how and how often they did it, too. I found that men tend to gradually produce less testosterone after 30, which in extreme cases can lead to a decreased sex drive or even erectile dysfunction. Of course, there are more factors that determine why a man's testosterone levels can decrease after 30—like his lifestyle, weight, or mental health—but given that we're a generation of eternal adult children, I was wondering if a declining sex drive is a thing now that we're getting older, and how we're dealing with that. And is it a biological thing, or are there other sociological reasons?
I spoke to Yvon Dallaire, a French-Canadian psychologist and author specialized in relationship issues, who doesn't think it's a testosterone thing per se: "Thirty is a little too young to talk about a significantly decreased libido. In general, men's testosterone levels are at their peak between fourteen and forty years old approximately—when it starts to slowly but steadily decline over time. But men in their thirties tend to have sexually experimented more, which makes them better at managing their libido. They're not as dependent on it." To put it bluntly: Boys think less with their dicks as they grow older.
I used to be the person asking for sex all the time. My balls would often ache, because I constantly needed to masturbate. I don't miss those days at all.
Julien* is 32. He's been my friend since college, which is also as long as him and his girlfriend have been together. "I'm truly relieved to think less with and about my dick," he explains. "I used to be the person asking for sex all the time in the relationship, and when she wasn't in the mood, it would really frustrate me. These days, she's often the one who takes the initiative—and I really like that. Puberty was a particularly difficult time: My balls would often ache, because I constantly needed to masturbate. I don't miss those days at all."
As expected, the change in his behavior affected his girlfriend, Solange. "I kinda freaked out—I'd gotten so used to him always wanting sex," she says. "It's better this way—saying no to him because I wasn't in the mood could make both of us uncomfortable. For a while, I thought he'd lost interest in me, or he was cheating on me, even. But he wasn't—I think."
Eliot is 32 and used to be my boss. He says he doesn't feel less like having sex, but blames any change in how often it happens for him in having "less time." He adds: "Fifteen is the worst age; your hormones explode, and the women you like are only interested in older men." I'm having a great time picturing him as a severely confused and hopelessly horny teenager.
Louis is 38, married, and recently had his first child. He agrees with Yvon Dallaire. "I'm less obsessed with sex than I used to be. It feels like I've gotten enough experience to take it a little bit easier," he tells me. He used to watch a lot of porn when he was younger but that has changed over the years too. "I don't feel like watching porn, and I don't need it anymore. I've gotten a bit harder to please; if I do watch porn, I need the kind that is a bit more suggestive."
"I watch way less porn than a couple of years ago," 30-year-old George agrees. His most defining feature, to me, is the fact that he always wears a beanie that his mom knitted for him. "I used to watch porn every day—I needed it. I just had the urge. But I'd feel a bit hopeless and guilty about it—especially when after, you end up feeling like a sad sack with your dick in your hand and the video still running. I still watch porn but only two or three times a week. The kind in which a woman seems to enjoy herself too, if possible."
Because of their expanding sexual experiences, girls apparently become less of a mystery for guys by the time they've reached their 30s, and vice versa. "With time and age, I think relationships between men and women become more honest, which opens up our sex life and makes it more interesting," says Eliot.
A lot of the guys I talked to wholeheartedly agree that they're a lot less selfish in bed than they used to be, but if I'm honest, I think some were bullshitting me. Mostly because one of them stood very closely next to me in a club at 4 AM, trying to sexily yell in my ear while resting his hand on my shoulder as he did so. But in general, it makes sense—less urgency, less pressure, and a better connection should make for better sex. Most of the guys I talked to basically came to the same conclusion, which Eliot summed up perfectly: "I largely prefer my sexual life at thirty-two to what I had at twenty-two."
That's all lovely, but what about women? Well, heterosexual women's sexuality tends to evolve in a different way: Some might need a moment to get over their insecurities, accept, or understand the fact that they themselves are more bothered about their mismatched underwear and droopy asses than their partners. But once they get over themselves, great things can happen. As Yvon Dallaire told me: "For a lot of young women, sex is at first about the potential. Once a woman has learned what gives her pleasure, her sexual desire increases, up until she's about forty-five. A woman can be at the peak of her abilities at that age."
Or, according to my friend Zoé: "I have the impression that you spend years trying to get rid of those complexes and moral constraints so you can finally just enjoy yourself." So maybe, we could generally say that heterosexual men and women follow a different path but end up at roughly the same place in the end: less obsessed with ourselves and better suited for some festive fornication. Isn't that what life is about in the end?
“The Game” is the title of this game. For App Store purposes, it's “The Game - Play … as long as you can!”, but it's really just “The Game”. You see what happens, Patchwork: The Game? Now I have to hire John Goodman to take a baseball bat to Clash Royale’s new sports car (because that's the first hit at the moment when you search for “the game” on iTunes, which nicely preserves the mistaken identity motif. Also, Clash Royale can afford a replacement). In some ways, I understand--it has to be hard to choose a name for a completely abstract hand-management game. If you sell the game as Twilight Sparkle’s Rainbow Butterflies, people will look at the paragraph’s worth of rules and dismiss it as something to trade to their kids for a moment’s peace. If you go for something more like Mind Duel Challenge Team Force and slap a “Spiel des Jahres Nominee” sticker on it, enthusiasts might be more aware that there’s some depth, but the casual crowd will steer clear of a game they could perfectly comfortably play. So they went with the equivalent of “It’s a Game - You Play It”, and then tried to give it a little more flavor by borrowing stylistic elements from black magic and pyromania. I don’t understand it any more than you do.
“Die Eier von Satan” inspired me to put the scary voiceover in German.
In the solo-only digital conversion, The Game works like a puzzle. You have a hand of (usually eight) cards drawn from a deck with the numbers 2-99, and you must place two (or three, on the higher difficulty levels) per turn onto piles. You have four piles to choose from: two up, two down. On an up pile, you can place any card higher than the value showing, or a card exactly ten less than the value showing. Down piles are exactly the same, but climb down. Your goal is to play as many cards as possible. If you empty the draw pile, you’re doing pretty well, but you only beat the game if you play every card. Even on the easy level, that’s very difficult for me. [I'm pretty sure it's difficult for everyone -ed.]
What makes this dry exercise in testing your comprehension of greater than and less than interesting is the varying degrees to which you can plan to bounce back ten. Sometimes, you’re given very little to work with, and you’re simply playing to reduce the distance you travel and avoid leaving several piles in need of similar cards. But sometimes you’re holding 38, 58, and 68, with only 10 cards left in the deck and you have to try to remember whether you’ve already played the 48 and whether you can delay long enough to set up that epic bounce-chain. Because the balance between tactics and strategy is always shifting, you’re constantly re-evaluating how deeply you need to think. There’s a disagreeable amount of card memory involved in truly excellent play, but I found myself mostly not even trying, and still enjoying the task.
Digital-only Lift Up mode offers big rewards for consecutive cards.
The Game switches things up by adding several additional modes: more difficult versions of the normal rules in which you must play three cards per turn, or have a hand size of seven rather than eight. There’s also the “On Fire” mode, in which 22, 33, and so on require that you cover them up immediately once played to a pile; if they remain uncovered at the end of the turn, you lose. But the real star for me was the digital-only “Lift Up” mode, which turns the game into a high-score chase. It’s particularly cool because, though the variability is still present, the amount of planning ahead is somewhat higher. In Lift Up mode, you earn a stacking multiplier each time you play a card only one higher or lower than the cards it’s on. Since there’s a 25-point bonus to bouncing back, the ideal play involves playing several cards in a row which are adjacent to their predecessors, then bouncing back. But the balance between big plays vs. consistent efficiency interacts with your thinking about the usual concerns about moving too far in a complex way, but never gives you so much to think about that it becomes a sitting still simulator. As a parent, a sitting still simulator becomes a grail game, but, as a player, it’s not really my bag.
The less-forgiving iPhone 5-size makes tapping less accurate, but de-emphasizes the “Blair Witch Project” elements. Kind of a wash.
There are a lot of reasons you might not like The Game. There’s enough randomness that you’re assured of numerous opportunities to curse the gods. The theme is so thin and strange I’m honestly a little surprised they even bothered to represent physical cards splayed out as a hand. For a brief game that’s light on rules and has few interface elements, they’re often small enough to be hard to tap accurately on a phone-size screen (though I tip my hat to The Game's designer, Steffen Benndorf, for pointing out that it’s possible to tap on a card and its destination, rather than dragging, which helps quite a bit). It’s solo-only. But it merits its SdJ nomination; very few games are so completely approachable while offering as interesting a challenge, and its brevity makes it very well-suited to mobile. Now, if only they’d named the app The Game: The Game, so I could mock it while feeling as though the devs are laughing with me.
Given that Stephen Colbert is an excellent singer, it seems only right that he would get to put his pipes to good use during his interview with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom last night. Through song, Bloom educates Colbert about the magic of musicals…but just don’t remind her about the 13 pounds she’s gained since […]
This archetypal and infinitely malleable blueprint for the Sour was, alongside the Fix and the Julep, one of the very first formulas to climb out of the primordial cocktail era of the nineteenth century. It was a time when Victorian drinkers adjusted to the speed of city life and away from the communal punch bowl, and their drinks made the leap into the single servings, recipe book-keeping, and purpose-driven glassware we’re used to today.
Putting aside its historical value in the nascent world of cocktails, the Sour is still very much relevant today. Not only does it open one up to a world of classics, its versatility makes it a great tool for the curious and innovative: The balance of the parts practically begs to be tweaked and toyed with, worked over with new spirits, sweeteners and, well, anything else you might have floating around your kitchen.
Though often written out as 1 : 1 : 2 (sweet : sour : spirit), the standard ratio, in truth (when accounting for variability between different states and the various bars within them, and the ever-changing tastes and trends), is generally only 3/4 ounce of both sweet and sour to 2 ounces of base spirit. The formula .75 : .75 : 2, however, does not have quite the same mnemonic harmony.
We'll dive in with the granddaddy and flag-waver, the Whiskey Sour, then move on to other Sour iterations.
Measure out your two ounces of whiskey: Most opt for a comparatively sweeter bourbon, but a bracing rye may work better in certain variations, such as the red-wine floated New York Sour; it’s a matter of personal taste.
With your preferred booze in the cocktail shaker, add your simple syrup (the sweet) and lemon juice (the sour). And already we’re at the first fork in the road. If you’re in the mood for a frothier, more luxurious sour, crack in an egg white and give everything a nice dry (no ice) shake. This step, a “pre-shake” done with all the ingredients but without the ice, helps to better emulsify the egg white.
Whether you choose to invite eggs or wine to the party, or are looking to keep it simple, there’s really only one unbreakable rule: don’t use Sour mix. You’re better than that.
After shaking, strain into a rocks glass over a nice big cube. There, now you have something to sip on while taking this brief survey of some of the notable, and very different, Sours out there.
Some people prefer theirs with gin, some with vodka. Some (insane) people prefer the Raymond Chandler version, which simply calls for a 50 : 50 of gin and Rose’s.
More reasonable voices have added little twists here and there, such as shaking with fresh basil or muddling cucumber. The simple, clean flavors at work lend themselves to such experimentation, like seasonal herbs at the farmers market.
The first time I heard of this Los Angeles classic, it sounded off. Grapefruit with a brown spirit? Honey syrup? Those concerns, of course, disappeared with the first sip. With its slightly altered ratios, it also brings up a good point: the Sour Formula is just that—a formula—and different ingredients will require slight tweaks.
The Sour formula even works with tequila. If your experience with margaritas has been limited to the frozen or over-sweetened kinds, keep this recipe in your back pocket for summer parties. You’ll be happy you did.
2 ounces vodka, .75 ounces Cointreau, .75 ounces lime juice
In many ways, the Kamikaze is just a streamlined version of its more famous, cranberry-colored cousin, the Cosmo. Traditionally, this 70s recipe is split up into several shots, but it works just as well in a cocktail glass.
This is just an overview of the flexibility of the formula. There’s more out there to explore and more ways to tweak them all. Play with them, make them your own! Enjoy.
O presidente da Xunta agrega os saldos migratorios de 2008 a 2014 para afirmar que en Galicia segue a "entrar" máis xente da que "sae". O xefe do Goberno esgrime que Castelao nunca "dubidou" do seu "carácter español e europeo".
Ferran Adrià lo puso sobre la mesa, allá por 1993 con su El Sabor del Mediterráneo –bueno, aceptemos que Ducasse y Maximin habían hecho ya algo al respecto antes, si bien su influencia aquí fue infinitamente menor- y desde entonces no hemos dejado de hablar de la cocina española como una cocina mediterránea. Y eso, que en líneas generales puede ser más o menos cierto, por mucho que hablar de LA cocina española me parezca reduccionista tiene aquí, desde donde escribo, más cerca de Londres que de Palamós una vigencia relativa.
Aquí, donde tenemos más crucíferas que alcachofas, más mantequilla que aceite (antes de replicarme dale un vistazo a cualquier recetario clásico de cocina gallega), más centollas y percebes que langostinos y galeras, donde al pan de maíz, que antiguamente era de mijo o de panizo aun le llamamos broa, del germánico Bröt y no del mediterraneísimo Panis. Aquí, decía, hemos tardado en asumir nuestra diferencia, pero hemos acabado por hacerlo. Y bendita sea la diferencia.
En los 80 fue Toñi Vicente la pionera. Creo que no le hemos hecho aun justicia. Ella nos puso en el mapa de la cocina contemporánea y ahí seguimos, 30 años después, haciendo en ocasiones cosas que no son tan distintas de las que ella planteó en su momento. Junto a ella una generación de cocineras –aquí, en aquella época, fueron ellas las que marcaron el rumbo- como Ana Gago (Casa Pardo) o Manicha Bermúdez (Taberna de Rotilio) antes de que apareciera, ya en el cambio de siglo, el Grupo Nove con los Marcelos, los Sollas y todos los demás como un gran acento que se colocaba sobre el territorio haciendo que las miradas se volvieran hacia aquí.
Aun así, tuvo que llegar la influencia escandinava para que acabásemos de abrazar nuestro atlantismo. Sí, aquí somos hijos de ElBulli, pero diría que también en parte de NOMA y sus parientes cercanos, del Geranium, del Koks de las Faeroe, del desaparecido The Paul, del Studio de Torsten Vildgaard, del Nordic Food Lab. Igual no somos plenamente conscientes, pero son ellos los que nos han hecho mirar hacia las dunas de las playas, hacia las aguas heladoras del Atlántico y hacia las verduras locales y entender que ahí podía estar nuestra señal de identidad.
Lo he visto en la cocina de Iván Domínguez (Alborada en A Coruña y Alabaster en Madrid), en su berza fermentada al estilo de un kimchi local, pero también en sus platos con múgil (muxel o muxo por aquí, lisa o albur en el sur), ese pescado tanto tiempo repudiado por estas latitudes y que los anglosajones valoran hasta el punto de equipararlo al salmonete: grey mullet y red mullet les llaman, respectivamente. Lo veo también en su vieira, en las zamburiñas, en los caramuxos, en las algas…
Lo he visto en Culler de Pau, la casa de Javi Olleros, en su “Con Negro”, pero también en su buey de mar con algas y grelos o en sus huevas ahumadas y en salmuera con brotes de guisantes; lo he visto en los erizos con alga de Nacho Rodríguez, en Gastromanía, en la lubina con remolacha de O Camiño do Inglés, en las ostras rebozadas de A Pulpeira de Melide, en las cigalas de Luis Veira (Árbore da Veira) o en las de Fernando Agrasar en As Garzas, en el bocata de calamares o el sanmartiño de Bocanegra, en las navajas con huevas de La Molinera, en el bogavante con oreja de cerdo de Manso, en el jurel marinado de Alén Tarrío en el Café de Altamira, en los ravioli de buey de mar con lima de A Tafona. Lo he visto en una generación de cocineros jóvenes que están haciendo suyo ese lenguaje con más fuerza aun, si cabe, que las generaciones anteriores. Y que están encontrando ahí su identidad gastronómica y, junto a ella, la nuestra.
No creo en conceptos monolíticos, así que no asumo eso de “la cocina española es esto”. No hay una cocina española y, si la hay, es una cocina de cocinas. Es una cocina que puede ser mediterránea en ocasiones y atlántica en otras. Y aun dentro de eso, poco tiene que ver la cocina atlántica de un Alborada con la de un Aponiente, por poner un solo ejemplo. Ambas atlánticas, ambas ibéricas, ambas absolutamente personales y únicas.
Hemos tenido que llegar hasta aquí para entenderlo y ahora que hemos sido capaces de asumirlo sin complejos es el momento de profundizar en ello, de explorarlo y arriesgar, de disfrutar con el riesgo de ser diferentes, de sumar, de aportar diversidad y de no perder de vista a toda esa generación de cocineros en la que, al menos de momento, Iván Domínguez y Javier Olleros son los que hacen una apuesta más decidida. Van a ser unos años muy interesantes para la cocina gallega.
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A terrible 'Hello Kitty' vibrator, which according to Chantall is "a real collector's item"
Jessie and Jennifer Clavin started working on new music while the former was getting evicted and the latter was abandoning an unhealthy relationship. With bassist Micayla Grace, the reeling sisters decamped to a tiny house in Joshua Tree to write. Conditions were ripe for regret, nostalgia and melancholy, yet the three women — who perform as the punk-pop band Bleached — emerged with a collection of songs that are resoundingly, stalwartly positive.
Foto por Bruno Bayley
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En los 80 fue Toñi Vicente la pionera. Creo que no le hemos hecho aun justicia. Ella nos puso en el mapa de la cocina contemporánea y ahí seguimos, 30 años después, haciendo en ocasiones cosas que no son tan distintas de las que ella planteó en su momento. Junto a ella una generación de cocineras –aquí, en aquella época, fueron ellas las que marcaron el rumbo- como Ana Gago (Casa Pardo) o Manicha Bermúdez (Taberna de Rotilio) antes de que apareciera, ya en el cambio de siglo, el Grupo Nove con los Marcelos, los Sollas y todos los demás como un gran acento que se colocaba sobre el territorio haciendo que las miradas se volvieran hacia aquí.
No creo en conceptos monolíticos, así que no asumo eso de “la cocina española es esto”. No hay una cocina española y, si la hay, es una cocina de cocinas. Es una cocina que puede ser mediterránea en ocasiones y atlántica en otras. Y aun dentro de eso, poco tiene que ver la cocina atlántica de un Alborada con la de un Aponiente, por poner un solo ejemplo. Ambas atlánticas, ambas ibéricas, ambas absolutamente personales y únicas.